As a gamer I need to speak out against the hate group known as Gamergate

[Bjorn Against]

As a gamer that supports equal rights for women I did not know quite how to react when I first heard of the misogynistic hate group Gamergate. My first reaction was to defend gamers, I viewed Gamergate as a tiny fringe group that did not represent the majority of gamers and I wanted to speak as one of the many gamers who rejects misogyny and likes to see realistic portrayals of women in our games.

When the Gamergate story broke I focused my energies on defending the gamers who were willing to listen to feminist critiques such as those from Anita Sarkeesian and work on moving to make gaming a more inclusive medium. While I recognize that sexist portrayals of women have long been a problem in the industry, I also think there are a number of game developers who are responsible and don't put sexism into their games. There are a lot of us gamers who despise everything that Gamergate stands for and we want women and minorities to be able to enjoy our hobby without being made to feel uncomfortable.

That is why I largely ignored Gamergate early on, I wanted the gamers who wanted to do good to be the focus rather than allow the group I viewed as the fringe to control the dialogue. I had hoped that if people would look away from Gamergate they would disappear, but unfortunately that has not happened. While I do still think that Gamergate is a fringe group that does not represent the majority of gamers, they are a very loud fringe group and it has become very clear that they are not going to allow people to ignore them. If they are not going to go away on their own I can no longer be silent as a gamer, I need to say what I really feel about these hateful assholes.

Gamergate is the KKK of the gaming community and they need to be treated as such. They are a violent hate group which threatens women's lives, and they need to be treated like any other violent hate group. Some of the things they have done are criminal, they are a terrorist organization that uses fear and intimidation to attack women and gays. This is no exaggeration either, at least one women has actually had to flee her own home because of terroristic threats made against her, another had to cancel a major speech after a mass shooting was threatened if it were to take place, others have been threatened with rape.

Most of the major gaming news sites have been largely silent on Gamergate so far, they are clearly scared to say anything about it. The problem is however that the Gamergate assholes have been posting increasingly bigoted comments on their pages and while they may delete the worst of these comments they have not been willing to speak out and say Gamergaters are not welcome in their community and I think that is what needs to be done. I think the gaming websites need to revoke the posting priviliges of those who promote Gamergate, and the game developers need to ban any Gamergate bigots from playing their games online. I know many gamers hate playing online with bigots, it is those gamers that reject bigotry who are too often the ones forced to leave however because the hateful people are usually allowed to get by with the most vile racist and misogynistic crap. If people can not enjoy their hobby without pushing hate then they need to have their hobby taken away from them, people need to push companies like Microsoft and Sony to ban racists and misogynists from their online gaming networks.

While I at first hoped that Gamergate would be one of those stories that would be in the news for a couple of weeks and then go away, it is clear that is not the case. Gamergate has clearly established itself as a hate group which has the potential to be around a long time if it is not made clear that the gaming community wants nothing to do with them. That is why gamers can no longer be silent about this, nor can the games industry. We don't want to see these hateful people when we log on to play our games, we don't want to see their hate speech posted on gaming web sites, it is time we stop allowing them to make the gaming world a hostile environment for others and instead we need to make it a hostile environment for bigots.